The Bandaris

What? Bandar-who?

The Bandaris are like any of your average family living in a city or ‘bandar’ as is known in Bahasa Melayu. Caught up in the chase for more and more materialism and comfort of living, falling to the pressures of society to “get upgraded” and all this while forgetting the bigger, more important things in life, the things that are key essentials to our life… like clean water and air, food and a stable climate. The one thing that can assure us of these essentials are FORESTS. So very simply, we need air, water, food and we know our forests can provide us with this in the most cost effective way! Hence, PROTECTING OUR FORESTS is the key to this.

Provision of these essentials is what we call ecosystems services which resulted from a dynamic and complex interactions between plants, animals, microbes, and its physical environmental features. A healthy forested area would support a myriad of ecosystems services. Ecosystem services can be broken down to four different types:

These ecosystems services is what makes up the circle of life – take one element away and everything will go haywire and fall apart.

This video (The Bandaris) gives a little glimpse and a simple understanding of what are parks or protected areas and how important it is to us. To complement a wholesome education is not only to read up but to also pay a visit and experience the beauty and wonder of these parks and all it has to offer. And honestly, it beats going to an air-conditioned mall any day.

How can visiting a park help protect it?
By going to a park and by encouraging more people to visit parks and forests, it boosts presence at these parks and therefore there is less chance of it being faced by threats. Also, once you have visited a park, you will feel connected to it and if it is faced with any threat you will voice your opinion and take action to help protect the area.

Love & Protect Contest's Winners Announcement!
The Bandaris 'Love and Protect' contest which was a special contest for school kids (upper primary & lower secondary) has finally ended! Click here in order to find out the contest's result.

Please note that
wwf.org.my, www.facebook.com/wwfmy, www.twitter.com/wwfmy, and www.youtube.com/wwfmy are WWF-Malaysia's only official digital channels. If you have any concerns or queries, please e-mail: contactus@wwf.org.my.